Band of Brothers

I've now been spending my nights watching Band of Brothers, a 10-part HBO miniseries focusing on the actions of Easy Company, United States Army, during World War II. No, they're not really brothers. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that it's freaking awesome, as I've always had a thing for war movies, cases in point: Generation Kill, Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down. I recommend all, although the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan is not for the squeamish. Anyways, I've got the DVD boxset, and there are ten episodes, each about an hour plus long. That'll fill a few nights. Not to mention the special features.

Since I've finished Braid it was only a matter of time before something crawled up to take it's place in my cramped schedule. And that is GRID. A racing game, and it's about as far from Need for Speed as you can possibly get. By that I mean it makes sense. It's realistic. And that also means it's absofreakinglutely difficult. I tried normal mode and the best I got was eleventh place. Out of twelve. Even easy aint no cakewalk. It is hardness incarnate. There's even this Le Mans 24 Hour race, which in real life is 24 hours long. Here it's 24 minutes. I got 19th place. Out of 20. The 20th car got totalled. That was easy mode. Sigh.

Time and Place

I've just finished Braid, the aforementioned cross-over between Mario and time-travel. And the ending was... deep. You should play it, and feel the brain strain. I've never used so many parts of my head at once, no, not even when studying for exams. Although technically I did cheat a bit ( c'mon, in a game that hard, a few walkthroughs here and there can't hurt, right? ) but what have technicalities ever done for us, eh? Anyways, the ArmA download, after an amazing 100kb/s start, has fizzled down to a measly 10 or so kb/s. This could take a while. And I've also finished Plants vs Zombies, having defeated the ginourmous robot-zombie mega boss. With melons. Yes.

I've also now got my position in class. Overall I think I did about the same as the beggining of year exam, although the non-C for BM was very welcome. In the end I got a percentage of 85 or 86 or something and a total position of *drumroll* 13th. Shut up, I know you're probably ridiculously smart, but thirteen is a lucky number ( right? ). All in all, I'm pretty happy with my results, and once again, Jia Min, Boon Kuan and I are the top three boys in our class ( although with only 15 boys in our class, that wasn't really tough to pull off. Still, don't ruin my moment. )

Braid

Braid is the name of my latest time-waster. I've been playing it for the last couple of days, and I won't rest until it's completed. I owe it to my brain. Braid is a puzzle game, but much smarter than your average one. In short, it's like Mario with time travel. It's also one of the most difficult games I've ever played. Some puzzles are really, really hard, and I get a headache just thinking about it. But it's awesome. The artwork is beautiful, and the endless soothing tones give a nice, relaxing feeling. Or they would, if some of the puzzles were not so bloody hard. I've spent forty-five minutes on collecting just one item. And many puzzles I'm yet to complete. But the satisfaction of it is immense.

On another, completely unrelated note, I counted like 15 police officers lining the streets on the drive down here, plus one helicopter. Whatever's going on, I hope it's good. On yet another unrelated note, my Team Fortress 2 skills have dipped considerably. You see, I'm beginning to suck. And the more I suck, the less I play. The less I play the more I suck; and so on. Thus, I am now downloading ArmA, the sequel to the ultra-realistic Operation Flashpoint that I loved so much. Godspeed.

Start

The holidays have ended, and I've been rudely awakened by a splash of water ( or acid ) and have come to the sobering conclusion that yes, I'm in school. Darn. Ah well. My results have actually been pretty good so far, especially the fact that I didn't get a C for BM ( thank God ).Other than that, nothing much else has happened. We sang a song about mushrooms, played a game about farming ( and burning ), and stoned quite a bit. Not the apocalypse I was fearing, but as always, I can't wait for the holidays. I never can.

Next up is Sports day. Most of you will be in a Practice thingy ( I don't really know ) as I speak ( or write ). But to me, that simply means a free day today. Awesome. And I'm not going for Sports Day. I don't like marching. I don't know why I even tried. Although now, I can beat Jia Min in a one on one race. HA! And I just got this game called Braid, sorta like Mario with time travel; which I'll be getting to right... about.... now.

Of Baking, Eating, Falling and Exploding

Whoa did so much stuff in the past couple of days. This is fun. Lets start with Tuesday, or Baking Day. We decided to go to Tze Kwangs house to bake a cake and some choco-balls ( Nanahoj ) for Johanan's birthday party the following day. It went great. Or at least, would've if I wasn't there. It seems my fears about baking were well founded. We started by making those choco-balls and almost immediately we realised we had burnt the chocolate. After an attempt to save it by drowning it with a large amount of milk, Tze Kwang abruptly realised that he had left out two major ingredients. Thus Brandon and Han Jiang ran all the way to Atria, and panic ensued.

Then, Alycia came, and by that time we were "done" with the choco-ball batter, so she started work on the cake. I decided to help. Which is exactly when I screwed up. Suffice it to say, I attempted to crack an egg into the mixing bowl ( which I have done before, mind you ), and it well, *ahem* exploded onto the table. Needless to say, I never touched anything again, instead preferring to back away and watch from a distance. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe, just maybe, it was the egg's fault. Shut up.

Next came the surprise party. Started at eight the next morning, which meant I was suitably lethargic by the time I got there. The moment I did, anyway, Alycia, being the wonderful, confidentiality-respecting person that she is, immediately proceeded to tell everyone about my awesome baking skills. And then she posted it on her blog. The party went pretty great, except for when, against my better judgement, I decided to eat one of my chocolate balls ( which are, by the way, infused with a less-than-healthy amount of sugar; Tze Kwang went a bit overboard ). I had a stomach ache for the remainder of the day. Not to say that noone liked it though, I know some people got high from the sugary overdose.

Then on Thursday, I went to Genting, the first time I went in the past five years. Where do I start? I know, I'll start with breakfast. For breakfast, we went to a local coffee house where there was a gas fire which looked pretty cool. Good thing we didn't all die. Next up, after the one-and-a-half hour drive to Genting, the first ride that I decided to go on was the Space Shot. Possibly not the wisest of choices, but it was stupidly fun all the same, with me laughing the entire time. I also, among other things, went on the Go-Karts, Flying Dragon, Cyclone and the Mine Train. By an amazing coincidence, I also met Amanda there, who had apparently gone with her family on the exact same day.

This is starting to become a really long post. So I'll finish it soon. On Friday, Shaun, Brandon and I went to the cybercafe ( no holiday is complete without one ) and spent a good four hours playing Call of Duty 4. All in all, it's been a great week, with hopefully more to come even when school starts. But I don't want to think about that. I'm in my happy place. Holidays forever!

Bake

I'm going baking. At Tze Kwangs house. We shall bake a cake, followed by rum balls ( without the rum, I'm told ) and they shall be used for human consumption. And I shall be helping them. Oh dear. Wish me luck, I'll need it. Then tomorrow I'll be going for a party to eat said cake ( I hope the person the party is for doesn't read this ) and then on the day after that I'm going to Genting with family. All my hopes are that it'll be freaking awesome. Then there's a chance on the day after that I'll be coing to a cybercafe with Shaun and Brandon. Weee.

On another, more ominous note; I've installed ( with the help of Shaun ) Frozen Throne on my computer. I hope I'll play Gem Tower Defense more than DotA; as I have already given Shaun permission to kill me, should I become obsessed with it. It's a strange state of affairs, as soon as I start playing DotA, Shaun stops ( as I've told him to do for the past two years ). While we're still on the subject of things you can do to waste your time, I'd like to recommend Hedgehog Launch, a game about using catapults and rockets to launch a hedgehog into space. Seriously. Google it, it's free.

Infrequent

As you may have noticed, I'm trying to keep the number of posts I make in a month at a minimum of six. This is getting progressively harder to maintain, as I actually start doing stuff. This is the first time I've posted in a week, and it seems fitting to tell you how the holidays are going. In one word; well. In two words; quite well. So here's a basic list of how things went down - Monday, Shaun came over, played computer games a lot; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - in Penang with my cousin played computer games a lot. Friday - stayed at home doing nothing; Saturday and Sunday - went to Aaron's house, played more computer games.

I think I should take it easy on the games side of things; although considering the fact that I'm on a computer right now, that might be hard to maintain. And another thing - I played DotA for the first time. This is the point that many of you may have expected me to have found the Holy Grail of computer games, and to subsequently bow down before its awesomeness; thus throwing away any sense of dignity I once had. But I won't. Because it's not awesome. It's okay. What is awesome ( in a sad way ), is how many people readily throw their lives away to play more and more of this sadly addictive game.

But I'm not addicted. Honest. In fact, I think I better stop playing while I still suck; God forbid I actually become good at it and then become addicted. What is pretty awesome though, is Gem Tower Defense. If you haven't played it, you should, and very likely could considering you already have a 100% chance ( if you're a boy, anyway ) of owning Warcraft III; and playing it excessively every day. Maybe I'm being a bit stereotypical. Oh well, get used to it.